The internet is changing

A report in today’s Guardian Technology section reports of moves afoot to upgrade the core Internet system (the framework on which the World Wide Web operates).

This move from version four to version six will cost billions to implement but will make ‘always-on touch of a button connectivity’ a reality - even to equipment such as cell phones, and household appliances. This means movies and TV will be accessible with full-size high-resolution images, instantaneously streamed to your screen. No more time-consuming downloading!

Version six also includes improved data traceability and identification meaning that internet fraudsters will find scams increasingly difficult to pull off, and authorities will have greater means to track down perpetrators.

From The Guardian: -

No more spam. No more “phishing” bank scams. News, pictures and short clips sent seamlessly to your phone … or your fridge. Video conferencing that works first time, no hassles. Free, stereo-quality phone calls anywhere in the world. No, it’s not a utopian ideal, it’s the internet that some people will begin to experience in the next 12 months.
Unknown to virtually everyone except IT engineers, the internet is being upgraded to a system called IPv6 (for Internet Protocol version 6). Just as you upgrade your mobile phone, computer or any modern appliance, the internet is undergoing a vast, gradual upgrade that will transform how it works and the way we interact with it.

The change could be compared with that from analogue to digital TV. Like that shift, the benefits are obvious to those involved, but people will have to buy new equipment and the network’s infrastructure will in some cases need a virtual rebuild. It will also, in some places, create incompatibilities between old and new.

[…]

The first is to allow the internet to potentially expand virtually to infinity. Here’s why. Everything connected to the internet needs its own numerical address so the packets know where to go. IPv4 offers a maximum of just over 4 billion such addresses. That could never cope with the ambitious plans to connect not just every phone, TV and computer in the world to the internet, but also things such as kettles and fridges. IPv6 solves this by providing not 4bn addresses but more than three hundred billion billion billion billion (actually, 3.4 x 10^38, or 2^128).

IPv6 will also make the entire internet more secure by including a check on every single packet sent. The packet’s receiver will know its origin and that it wasn’t tampered with on the way. Fears about online security, which still stop many people from buying online, will be squashed.